uess. Well, a schoolteacher don't
meet men the way other people do; he's shut up with the childer all
the day, and he gets so he measures men by them. That won't do on the
sheep range, lad. But I guess you're findin' it out."

"I'm learning a little, right along."

"Yes, you've got the makin' of a sheepman in you; I said you had it in
you the first time I put my eyes on your face. Well, I'll be leavin'
you now, lad. And remember the bargain about my Mary. You'll be a
sheepman in your own way the day you marry her. When a man's marryin'
a sheep ranch what difference is it to him whether it's a Mary or a
Joan?"

"No difference--when he's marrying a sheep ranch," Mackenzie
returned.

CHAPTER XXIV

MORE ABOUT MARY

Mackenzie took Tim at his word two days after their interview, and
went visiting Mary. He made the journey across to her range more to
try his legs than to satisfy his curiosity concerning the substitute
for Joan so cunningly offered by Tim in his Laban-like way. He was
pleased to find that his legs bore him with almost their accustomed
vigor, and surprised to see the hills beginning to show the yellow
blooms of autumn. His hurts in that last encounter with Swan Carlson
and his dogs had bound him in camp for three weeks.

Mary was a smiling, talkative, fair-haired girl, bearing the
foundation of a generous woman. She had none of the shyness about her
that might be expected in a lass whose world had been the sheep range,
and this Mackenzie put down to the fact of her superior social
position, as fixed by the size of Tim Sullivan's house.

Conscious of this eminence above those who dwelt in sheep-wagons or
log houses by the creek-sides, Tim's girls walked out into their world
with assurance. Tim had done that much for them in rearing his mansion
on the hilltop, no matter what he had denied them of educational
refinements. Joan had gone hungry on this distinction; she had
developed the bitterness that comes from the seeds of loneliness. This
was lacking in Mary, who was all smiles, pink and white in spite of
sheeplands winds and suns. Mary was ready to laugh with anybody or at
anybody, and hop a horse for a twenty-mile ride to a dance any night
you might name.

Mackenzie made friends with her in fifteen minutes, and had learned at
the end of half an hour that friend was all he might ever hope to be
even if he had come with any warmer notions in his breast. Mary was
engaged to be married. She tol